Here I am again with another Meals of the Week post! It seems that you all enjoy these posts and I have to say I am happy for that because I really enjoy putting them together. Somehow sharing what you have eaten makes you more accountable I think and helps to keep me on the right path! There's no getting lazy when you know you are going to be sharing some eating inspiration with others!
I do think that when you are a person who lives all on their own, or if you are an elderly person, the temptation is there to just not want to bother much with cooking and preparing meals. It is all to easy to just open a can or pop a frozen dinner into the oven or the microwave.
The truth is however those ready meals are more often than not loaded with fat, salt and preservatives and I happy to believe we are worth much more than that and worth the effort! They are okay once in a while if you really get into a spot, but a steady diet of them is not a very good thing for anyone!
With that in mind I aim to share my weekly menus with you each week so that, hopefully, you can be inspired to want to cook and plan some of the same for yourself!
A lot of time was spent with family this week, but I still managed to cook me up some incredible deliciousness. Here we go!
SUNDAY, July 9th - Dinner at my sisters
Most Sunday's I go to my sister's for supper. This week she had pot roast which my brother in law cooked on the BBQ. (Its been quite warm and humid.) My sister just puts everything into a deep tin foil pan, covers it tightly with aluminum foil and pops it onto the BBQ.
My Brother in law closes the lid the BBQ and it roasts as if it was in an oven. Just on a medium low heat and he rotates the pan every so often. It wasn't a large roast, just a medium to small one and there were potatoes, onions and carrots in the pan, plus beef broth.
Another way to beat the heat and cook a good pot roast is to use an Instant Pot. You can access my recipe for a delicious Instant Pot Pot Roast here. Its fabulously tasty and very simple to make.
MONDAY, July 10th - Cold Plate
On Monday, it was still pretty hot and humid. I had all sorts of cold salads left from my sister's Birthday Celebration on the Saturday so I put myself together a Cold Plate. Cold Plates are very popular here in the Maritime Provinces in the summer months. I shared a tutorial on the blog on how to put one together.
On this particular day I had some cold roast chicken, potato salad, macaroni salad, coleslaw, cucumber sticks, tomatoes and lettuce. It was delicious and because I already had the salads in, not a lot of trouble. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy as they say!
TUESDAY, July 11th - Tuna Melt Sliders
It was still pretty hot and humid. That's July here in Nova Scotia. Every once in a while we will get a big thunderstorm to help release some of it and cool things off. On this particular day I turned my oven on briefly to make some Tuna Melt Sliders.
This was a small batch recipe. My favorite tuna salad, combined with a layer of grated cheddar cheese in soft slider buns, which had been brushed with an onion Dijon butter prior to baking. They are only in the oven for about 15 minutes altogether so not long enough to really heat up the kitchen.
Just long enough to melt the cheese. The buns stay nice and soft with crisp tops and the cheese is all melty gooey. I enjoyed this with some crinkle crisps (potato chips) on the side.
WEDNESDAY, July 12th - Lunch at Jonny's Cook House
I had wanted to take my sister out for lunch on her actual birthday the week before but the place we wanted to go to was actually closed and so we rescheduled for this week. My cousin Sheri joined us with her little boy Sawyer. It is one of our favorite places to eat! The food is great! And they have a bazillion different flavors of Ice Cream.
We had fish and chips, because theirs is really good, but usually we have the True Newf Poutine. Since I developed a copy cat recipe for it (see link in previous sentence) we usually have fish and chips. That True Newf Poutine is fabulous. Hot crisp fries, cheese curds, hot gravy and a generous amount of Newfie style stuffing scattered over top! A real favorite around here!
THURSDAY, July 13th - Tater Tot Chicken Pot Pie
I used some leftover cooked chicken I had in the freezer to make a two person sized Tater Tot Chicken Pot Pie on Thursday. This has all of the delicious flavors of a normal pot pie, with a rich and creamy gravy filled with cubed chicken, onions, peas, corn, and carrots.
This is put into a baking dish, topped with a layer of grated cheese and then frozen tater tots are put on top to cover. Baked in the oven the filling gets all lovely and bubbly and those tater tots get golden crispy brown delicious! So yummy. I enjoyed with a side salad for a wonderfully economical and tasty supper!
FRIDAY, July 14th - Delicious Instant Pot Beef Stew
My son arrived on Friday with his sweet wife and their three boys. They had requested that I make stew for supper. They love my stew. I doubled my Instant Pot Beef Stew Recipe and used potatoes instead of gnocchi this time around. They loved it! Tender chunks of lean beef and vegetables in a rich beef gravy. Delicious!
I also baked a loaf of my favorite Cheese Bread in the bread machine which went down a real treat with the stew!
For dessert we had Peachy Lemon Whip. This is a simple refrigerator dessert I have been making since my high school Home Economics days. Its simply delicious with a graham cracker crust bottom, a lush lemon whip over top and tinned peaches to cover.
SATURDAY, July 15th - Cheese Crusted Grilled Cheese
After feeding up my son and his family on pancakes, sausage and bacon for breakfast, they went on their way to camp. They will be back again once camp is over for a few days and we will have our real visit then. I am looking forward to hearing all about their camp!
I was exhausted though by the time supper rolled around so I made myself something simple. Just a cheese crusted grilled cheese sandwich and a mug of tomato soup. It was perfect. Not a lot to clean up afterwards and nice and filling. No fuss, no muss.
And there you have it my meals for the past week. I tried to keep my kitchen nice and cool this past week! I think I will be doing the same in the week to come! It was a very delicious week nonetheless and I got to share a lot of it with family, which was the best part of all!
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Love these and am always anxious to read them on Sunday - gives me ideas with this heat as well!
ReplyDeleteThanks very much Linda! I really appreciate your feedback as well! xo
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